Five Times Kara & Lee Kissed But Didn't Make Up
by misscam
Summary: Time doesn't work like that. It may repeat itself, seem endless and always run out anyway, but it doesn't erase. Time remembers, even if they don't want to. Kara/Lee, references to Kara/Zak, Kara/Sam and Lee/Dee


Five Times Kara and Lee Kissed (But Didn't Make Up)

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

Author's Note: Written for **munditia**, who bought me in a **help_haiti** auction, and requested 'more about five kisses between Kara and Lee we never see on screen'. Thus this. Many thanks to **lyricalviolet** for beta.

II

The second time Kara Thrace and Lee Adama kiss, they'll pretend it's the first and still endeavor to forget it.

(The first they've made a silent pact to pretend never happened, as if that itself will erase it from time. Time doesn't work like that. It may repeat itself, seem endless and always run out anyway, but it doesn't erase. Time remembers, even if they don't want to.)

This second time, it's in a bar on Caprica and it's over an entirely silly argument, because they both have enough non-silly arguments that a silly one seems like a welcome change.

Lee fights with his father, Kara fights with anyone she can provoke. It's easier to be berated by others than berating herself, even if she does that too.

(Zak should not have died. Zak should really not have died. She killed him.)

"A Viper pulls to the right!" Lee exclaims, Kara already shaking her head at him.

"No, that's just _your_ Viper. You work out your right hand a lot, Lee?"

(They've started meeting like this, every Thursday starting the week after Zak's funeral. At first it was a wake. Now it's almost like life returning.)

She pumps her hand and Lee sighs, taking a swig of beer while she grins wickedly at him. It's that smile, which fills him with wicked thoughts and comes at a wicked time that he could blame, but really it's just him and Kara and what they always seem to do to each other.

(Like the first time, the time that didn't happen, drunk on alcohol and attraction and risk, like the Viper pilots they both were.)

He still has beer in his mouth when he kisses her or she kisses him or they both kiss each other, and she still has the bottle in her hand when she puts it around his neck. Someone nearby wolf-whistles, but mostly Lee can hear his own heartbeats and counts them.

If the kiss lasts longer than ten heartbeats, it's more than the heat of the moment. If it lasts longer than twenty, it's outlasted the first rational thought. If it lasts longer than thirty, it's making out and rational thought is having a time out for a more extensive debate.

(A girl named Mary taught him all this when he was fourteen. She always kissed him to nineteen heartbeats, just to confuse him.)

Kara lasts to twenty-two, then abruptly tears herself away, her beer bottle knocking against the back of his head.

"No," she says, but it seems more to herself than to him. "Good night, Lee."

He watches her walk away, wondering if she has demons she won't mention, just like he has demons he never tells her about.

(His father. His mother. His life.)

The next week, Lee finds himself in the bar alone. The week after, he doesn't go, and never finds out Kara comes that time.

He doesn't see Kara again for a long time.

II

The first time Kara realises kissing Lee is no longer kissing Zak's ghost, Lee thinks she is doing just that for the first time.

(They both never talk about the kiss that happened while Zak still lived. That never happened. It would be unforgivable to do to both, and so she never did.)

She hasn't seen Lee in a long time, not since a drunk night in a bar and another typical reckless Kara maneouver, the kind that saves her life in a Viper and complicates her life in her skin.

(Do the unexpected in a Viper and throw your enemy off to live another day. Do the unexpected in a bar and live with the consequences the next day.)

It's one year since Zak's death and they both come to the small memorial. Somehow, she's not surprised to see Lee there and he doesn't seem surprised to see her.

It's a strange thing, to feel like strangers alike.

"My father is not with you?" Lee asks for a moment, the bitterness in his voice almosr rancid.

"He grieves in his own way," she says. She's learned to see that and read that. She wonders why Lee hasn't.

Lee merely stares ahead, and she can't help but step forward, can't help but touch his face, can't help but kiss him gently.

Him. Lee Adama, not Zak's brother, not the hint of Zak's smile on Lee's lips too, not the pretense that for just a moment, both brothers live.

Just Lee Adama, looking lost.

Only a few heartbeats seem to pass before he equally gently touches her face and pulls away.

"Zak's not coming back," he says brutally. "I'm not him. Tell dad that too."

"Tell him yourself," she says sharply, wondering how someone can change so fast from lost boy to dumbfrak asshole and not exceed the speed of light in the process.

"We can't talk," he says sincerely. "Not even if it was the end of the world. We just can't."

'Neither can we', she thinks.

When he walks away, she doesn't look after him.

II

The world does end.

Life, somehow, does not.

II

The first time Lee really feels alive again, Starbuck is kissing him as if it's a punishment and Galactica is groaning around them as if in pain.

(Galactica is the ultimate survivor. The ship scheduled for museum duty now turned the last hope of humanity, so close to scheduled extinction. It's a strange partnership, but then, Lee is getting used to those.)

"You're not dead," Starbuck whispers. She keeps saying that, like a mantra. At first he thought she was reassuring herself, but now he's beginning to think she's not saying it to herself at all.

"I'm not dead," he finally agrees, and then she pulls away, nodding.

"You're not dead, Apollo," she says.

Life's a strangely painful thing to accept, he thinks. Almost like they've all cheated death.

He intends to keep doing it now.

II

The second time Kara feels like a cheater, she's almost clawing at Lee's chest and his tongue is almost fighting hers and it's aggression and attraction dancing a tango and it's life, at least.

They should not be kissing. They've already established that. She doesn't want to get divorced. He doesn't want to cheat. There is Sam and Dee to consider.

(The two they didn't consider that night on New Caprica.)

Sam and Dee. They are here too. Kara with Sam's ring and Lee with Dee's, and that almost makes it Sam and Dee kissing too.

"Kara..." Lee mutters, and she bites down on his bottom lip. She doesn't want to hear it. Doesn't want to hear that they're trapped. Doesn't want to hear that words and vows mean something. Doesn't want to think about the mess she's made, the mess she always makes.

(Mess up Zak. Mess up her career. Mess up Lee. Might mess up Sam if she just keeps kissing Lee hard enough.)

"Kara!" he says, pressing his palms against her hands as she balls them. She watches his face inches from her own, looking at her so gently she wants to punch him.

"What, no 'don't do this to us, Kara?' No 'I won't cheat, I'm Apollo the Noble'. Come _on_!"

"Don't do this to yourself," he simply says, kissing her forehead before walking away.

She doesn't watch him walk away, staring instead at nothing and wondering why everything of late feels like a prelude to death.

She'll learn.

II

The first time Lee dreams of Kara, she's been dead three days and he's been in denial for two of them.

(She can't be dead. Can't. Too much unresolved between them and death can't come without resolution first. Can't, can't, can't.)

In his dream, she's on New Caprica with him again, kissing him like she loves him and mouthing that she does too. She did love him. She just didn't marry him.

He awakes sweating to his own loud heartbeats, counting to at least twenty before they seem to calm.

The second time he dreams of her, she's been dead so many days he has stopped counting and started grieving.

(She is dead. He has lost her, like she lost Zak, and Lee feels the same guilt he imagined she did. Maybe he could have saved her. Maybe, maybe, maybe.)

In his dream, she's on Kobol, smiling at him through the rain. He wants to lick the drops of water from her lips, kiss her until the sun comes back and there is nothing left for the sky to cry over.

But he can't move, can only watch until he wakes and feels his own tears.

The third time he dreams of her, he's gone to bed angry with his father, as he too often seems to these days.

(She shouldn't be dead, both father and son agrees. But they still manage to turn common ground into a battlefield. War, war, war.)

In his dream, she's on Caprica, dancing with Zak but meeting Lee's eyes across the room and not letting go. She seems at peace, like his brother, and Lee can read the words she mouths at him without any problem at all.

"Let me go," she says, over and over while the dance never ends.

He doesn't wake until the alarm sounds, and only begrudgingly then.

The fourth time he dreams of her, it's not a dream at all.

II

The last time Kara and Lee kiss, it manages to be a goodbye and a first kiss at the same time.

Galactica is going to be abandoned, and it's killing the Admiral. The President is dying, and that's killing Bill. The Cylons are walking among them like mortals too, and that's (very slowly) making differences die.

Sam is dead and isn't, and Kara isn't even sure she's alive.

Lee is alive. She hasn't seen him so alive before, not even in combat. Lee is taking over the job of the President, and the hope of humanity's survival and he seems to try to live for all of them.

So here she is, kissing him as if he can give her a kiss of life, even if she really knows she is dead.

Kara Thrace died. She isn't sure what she is now, but she is sure Lee doesn't care.

He's even said it. Still saying it now, his lips brushing against her so tentatively it might have been a first kiss.

Maybe she can pretend.

(Time doesn't work that way, but no matter. Humans work like that.)

"I have to go," Lee whispers, sliding a few fingers down her cheek. "We both have to, actually. I think dad has arranged something on the flight deck. Maybe a goodbye to Galactica, I don't know."

"I'll be there," she says, smiling a little when he does. "Just give me a moment."

When he walks away, she watches him. Lee Adama, Zak's brother and not just that. He turns when he's at the end of the hallway, and she gives him a little wave. He looks oddly at her for a moment before returning it, and then he is gone.

"Live for me, Lee," she says.

(She knows the Admiral would not arrange a goodbye to Galactica. Not like that. The Admiral goes down fighting. Maybe he's decided to this time as well. Maybe she can too.)

Then she follows Lee, touching the walls of the Galactica as she walks, feeling the groan like a fading heartbeat.

Yes.

It's time to end it now.

II

FIN


End file.
